Legendary Poetry: Temporary Friend

Temporary Friend

I have a temporary friend. Actually, I have had a lifetime of temporary friends. The come in and out like the tides of any beach anywhere in the world. They rise up mysteriously, sow their presence for a period of time, then vanish just as mysteriously as they came. Sometimes these temporary friends stay for just mere minutes. Sometimes they stay for much longer but ALL of them, and I do mean all of them, eventually leave me alone and friendless, going happily on their way to probably be a temporary friend to some other person. I am so naive and gullable to think that with each new friend, and it always seems to be beautiful women, that SURELY SHE will be different. Surely she will not vanish like some ghostly apparition of some bad B-movie. I always tell these women of my experiences with temporary friends though I don't use that specific term. Typically, I call them ex-girflfriends which is what they, in fact, are. The new female friend always assures me that she is NOT like those other women and at the very least we will remain friends, which, I have learned, is a bald faced lie.

And so it happened again. I met a beautiful woman on a social media platform. Seemingly, I met her out of nowhere. I'm not sure exactly where we met, I just know that it happened. It happened in a mysterious way, on some unknown day at some unknown hour, in a place that I actually knew though so I wasn't completely clueless. I do know this, however. I fell in love with her the first time I met her, that much was true. I didn't know her from Adam as the old folks sometime say. I didn't even know her, to be honest with you. But as silly as this sounds, I was totally head over heels in love with her and I didn't know what to do about it. I mean, what COULD I do? If I did anything at the time I would have appeared to have been the complete lunatic that I didn't want to come across to be, not in front of her to be sure. And yet, there she was with her beautiful face, her lovley hair, her dreamy eyes, and a smile that lit up the entire world, or so it seemed. And there I was, searching for the right words to say when I approached her, "like that would ever happen," I thought with an amount of sheepish embarasment. Not enough embarrassment to keep me thinking about how badly I wanted to approach her to say something, anything, but enough embarassment to keep me doing anything at all. And so, I hung my head down and shamefully walked away from her, assuming that I had lost my chance forever and would never see her again.

I saw her in passing on the highways and byways of life. I fell more deeply in love with her with each passing and yet, I also felt that a beautiful woman such as she would never be with a common man like me, even though people told me that I had uncommon intelligence and wit which seem to go hand in hand. And so I remained total and abject strangers with a beautiful woman who didnt know me at all and if she was aware of me, I surely didn't know this. As far as I knew, I was just another man in the vast sea o men more succesful, more wealthy, ore taleted, and ore handsome than myself and lookg upon the mirror that was my soul, or shold I say my god forsaken soul, I knew this well and I knew that there wasn't one damn thing that I could do to change anything about this or my situation.

Eventually our paths met and the planets and stars aligned to bless what started as a friendship but eventually became a serious relationship. All my hopes and dreams had come true! For once in my lonely and miserable life I was happy. The woman of my dreams, and to be honest she was far superior to any of my most wonderful dreams, had come into my life and joy returned to my miserable life and things were good again. Very good. I hung on her every word and seemed to be so very wise. I had never met a woman quite so smart and intelligent before. Where was this woman all my life, I wondered. No matter, I reasoned, she was in my life now and that's all that counted.

Everyday, and with each passing day, music sounded better, food tasted more delicious, scents smelled sweeter, and everything in front of my eyes was a bounty of epic proportions. Life grew to be better and more joyful with each new day. I gladly welcomed the dawn of a new day because that meant I would have the opportunity to talk to my beloved yet again. I began to fall in love with her and I confessed this to her as a sinner confesses his sins to his holy man. She told me that she loved me too and my heart grew to amazing sizes. My soul was finally healed of all the heartbreak from all of the other women who had mistreated me. I began to feel whole again and life was truly good.

Then, a terrible thing happened. The love of my life grew too busy for me. As a result, my soul and heart began to die a cruel death. I no longer had the nourishment to sustain myself. Not because I lacked physical sustenance, but because the food that I needed was the love, compassion, caring, and understanding of a woman who loved me. I had learned the shocking fact that this woman, who had only a few days ago confessed her undying love to me, did not love me at all. She loved the concept of being with a man like me but she did not love the actual man that I was. This woman was in love with herself, first and foremost, and only loved the things that gave her undying love to support her needs first, all other needs, including mine, be damned. Once I approached her with all the troubling things that she was doing to me she quickly blamed me for all of these problems.

If I only was a little more understanding, patient, loving, caring, kind, etc etc etc, I would see that I was the true problem she tried to argue unpersuasively to me. As I did not buy her lies and told her so, she naturally did the same thing as any and every temporary friend had done to me in the past. Since I was unwilling to concede the fact that she wanted to be king in the relationship, or the peron who wears the pants in the family, or even more shocking, the "man" in the family, she began to withdraw from me. Phone calls went unanswered, messages ignored, and when I did happen to reach her, she was too busy to talk to me.

In this case, I decided that I would not let her, my temporary friend, pull the plug on this tragic relationship. Instead, with all the courage I could must, I ended the relationship as one might painfully yank off a bandage that needed to be removed. And I found out something wonderful, for the very first time it was I who was the temporary friend and I felt as though I could fly.